Taoiseach's speech was pure demagoguery

WHEN the rest of the Irish media are fawning like schoolgirl groupies over Enda's childish/petulant Vatican-bashing speech, the Irish Independent is to be congratulated for bringing a much-needed degree of gravitas to proceedings in the shape of two excellent articles by David Quinn and Kevin Myers.

The speech was demagogic and mob-pleasing in the worst possible sense. Great oratory it wasn't, more barroom yobbish in tone.

If Brendan Bracken had presented this script to Winston Churchill during World War Two, "Winnie " would have told him to stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

Anti-papal rhetoric may be all the rage among the great unwashed, but it is not befitting of the leader of a so-called 'mature republic'.